Anne Thackeray Ritchie (1837-1919) was a writer and the eldest daughter of the novelist W. M. She had a tumultuous childhood: her mother suffered from depression and was eventually committed to a sanatorium, and the family experienced poverty before her father's literary success. Anne was extremely close to her father, who admired her intellect and encouraged her writing. When he died, Anne set up house with her sister Harriet and her brother-in-law, the literary journalist Leslie Stephen. Anne's novels were serialised in the Cornhill Magazine, which her father had edited, and their success established her literary reputation. A Book of Sibyls is Anne's study of four female writers: the poet Anna Laetitia Barbauld and the novelists Amelia Opie, Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen.